DIVERSION OF THE RHINE. 699 



altered in position and often quite obstructed ; the flow of its 

 tides would be modified bj the new geographical conditions ; the 

 sediment of the river would form new coast-lines and lowlands, 

 which would be covered with vegetation, and probably thereby 

 produce sensible climatic changes. 



Diversion of the Mhvne. 



The interference of physical improvements with vested rights 

 and ancient arrangements, is a more formidable obstacle in old 

 countries than in new, to enterprises involving anything approach- 

 ing to a geographical revolution. Hence such projects meet with 

 stronger opposition in Europe than in America, and the number 

 of probable changes in the face of nature in the former continent 

 is proportionally less. I have noticed some important hydraulic 

 improvements as already executed or in progress in Europe, and 

 I may refer to some others as contemplated or suggested. One 

 of these is the diversion of the Rhine from its present channel 

 below Ragatz, by a cut tlirough the narrow ridge near Sargans, 

 and the consequent turning of its current into the Lake of Wal- 

 lenstadt. This would be an extremely easy undertaking, for the 

 ridge is but twenty feet above the level of the Rhine, and hardly 

 two hundred yards wide at its crest. There is no present ade- 

 quate motive for this diversion, but it is easy to suppose that it 

 may become advisable within no long period. The navigation 

 of the Lake of Constance is rapidly increasing in importance, and 

 the shoaling of the eastern end of that lake by the deposits of 

 the Rhine may require a remedy which can be found by no other 

 so ready means as the discharge of that river into the Lake of 

 Wallenstadt. The navigation of this latter lake is not important, 

 nor is it ever hkely to become so, because the rocky and precipi- 

 tous character of its shores renders their cultivation impossible. 

 It is of great depth, and its basin is capacious enough to receive 

 and retain all the sediment which the Rhine would carry into it 

 for thousands of years.* 



* Many geographers suppose that the dividing ridge between the Lake of 

 Wallenstadt and the bed of the Khine at Sargans is a fluviatile deposit, which 

 has closed a channel through which the Rhine anciently discharged a part oi 

 the whole of its waters into the lake. In the flood of 1868, the water of the 



